This invention relates to optical fiber connectors and especially a method for terminating an optical fiber with a connector.
Several varieties of fiber optic connectors have been reported in the past. For the most part single-fiber connectors have been either too difficult to attach in the field or have been too expensive when attached in the factory. In general, it can be said that the difficulties are due to the accuracy with which the ends of the optical fiber wave guides must be aligned with each other. Typically, for step index fiber waveguides, center-to-center fiber displacements smaller than .+-.10 .mu.m must be obtained and the connections must be rugged enough to maintain this alignment under field conditions. Future optical communications systems will require optical interconnections with throughput power loss lower than 0.5 db which requires an alignment accuracy greater than .+-.5 .mu.m. The present invention can provide such accuracy.